Our Lady presents herself to us as the sublime Queen of History and the universe. It is a matter of knowing how to invoke her with confidence!
Newsroom (August 23, 2021, 13:20 PM, Gaudium Press) The Church, in instituting the Feast of Our Lady Queen, wished to glorify God through the royalty of his most Blessed Mother. It honors and venerates her with this title, one of the most glorious and beautiful that she has ever received.
Therefore, we should join with great joy the celebration of Mary’s royal attributes. Let us think about and meditate on them not only to know more about such excellent Sovereign but, above all, to increase our love and devotion to Her.
A great hope
Indeed, Our Lady is never more fully Queen than when reigning in human hearts and society. Unfortunately, it is also true that there is very little noticeable acceptance of this royalty in the contemporary world.
The world has been increasingly breaking away from Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Blessed Virgin Mary, despising and relegating the teachings and dictates of the Holy Church to second place. The result is the pinnacle of the disorder in which we live today.
For Our Lady to reign again in souls and over mankind, each of her devotees must have, above all, hope that a new Catholic era will come. It will be the Kingdom of Mary that St. Louis Grignion prophesied and described in the pages of his Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. In this Kingdom, all hearts and all civilization will willingly submit to the sweet empire of the Mother of God.
But, is that all? Should we live only on a great hope?
Reign in the hearts
No. We have the possibility, each of us within ourselves, to proclaim the Kingdom of Mary, to say:
“In me, O my Mother, You are Queen. I recognize your right and seek to heed your commands. Give me the light of intelligence, the strength of will, the spirit of renunciation, so that your resolutions may be obeyed. Even if the whole world revolts and denies You, I obey You“.
There will always be, amidst this turmoil, souls in which Our Lady keeps reigning. These hearts are the enclaves of Her on earth. They are consecrated to Her, and from them, She can extend Her dominion once more over the rest of the world.
“At last, my Immaculate Heart has triumphed!”
However, Our Lady is Queen and Mother of endless mercies. Knowing, as She only does, that God does not desire the sinner’s death but that he lives, the Blessed Virgin wants the salvation of all men.
Faithful or weak, saints or sinners, this Heavenly Mother always has the same attitude of kindness toward us, ready to sustain us in any situation and bring the solution to any problem.
And she can, by one of those wonders of her infinite mercy, obtain from Our Lord an extraordinary and irresistible act of grace, by which the rebellious souls are moved and converted. Enlightened and assisted so much from above, they do not even have the temptation of relapse.
Therefore, we must ask Our Lady to act in this way on the hardened and stubborn souls so that they open themselves to her royalty, all made of gentleness and benevolence.
May she break and remove, from the bottom of those rebellious hearts, the loathsome objections, the disordered passions, the wicked wills.
Let us have total confidence that the Heavenly Sovereign has the power to conquer an astonishing number of souls, to subdue the impenitent, and those who have been deaf to her appeals.
So that, one day not so distant, She will be able to proclaim: “At last – according to the promise I made at Fatima – my Immaculate Heart has triumphed!”
Text adapted from Heralds of the Gospel Magazine n.183, August 2018.
Compiled by Ena Alfaro